Following a second round of banks adding support for the Apple Pay mobile payments service last week, Regions Bank today began allowing its cards to be added to the service. The bank has reportedly emailed customers about the new support and MacRumors readers have been successfully adding their cards to Apple Pay.
Apple has also updated its list of participating issuers to include Regions, noting that personal credit and debit cards as well as small business credit cards and prepaid cards from the bank are supported at this time.
Regions Banks is based in Birmingham, Alabama and primarily serves the Southeast, Midwest, and Texas with over 1700 branches and 2400 ATMs.
While the number of supporting banks currently numbers a little over a dozen, Apple announced at its media event last month that it has over 500 banks signed on for Apple Pay. Many of the largest banks in the United States are already supporting the service, and the remainder of those signed on will continue rolling out support over time.
Thursday January 23, 2025 6:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 should be released to the public next week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones.
Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3.
Notification Summary Changes
Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries
Apple Intelligence...
Friday January 24, 2025 1:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.3 next week, bringing further refinements to Apple Intelligence features, a couple of neat new capabilities to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 devices, and bug fixes.
While not quite as packed with new features as Apple's preceding iOS 18 point releases, iOS 18.3 still introduces capabilities that aim to make your iPhone smarter and more intuitive. Below, we've...
Friday January 24, 2025 8:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 is expected to be widely released next week, and that means the first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner.
Apple has previously implied that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, as that is when it promised to make Apple Intelligence available in even more languages.
Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far.
Apple Intelligence for Siri
Siri ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 7:32 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Walmart still does not accept Apple Pay or other NFC payments at its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., and it stood firm on its reasoning for that today.
A spokesperson for Walmart today informed MacRumors that its position on contactless payments has not changed since we last reached out about the matter in 2022. The big-box retailer said it remains focused on its own convenient...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 6:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year. In this article, we recap rumored features and changes for the device.
The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports Wi-Fi 6E, which would be an upgrade over the current Apple TV's standard Wi-Fi 6 support. Wi-Fi 6E extends the...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes.
The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Friday January 24, 2025 9:09 am PST by Juli Clover
The upcoming iPhone 17 models that Apple plans to release this year will not feature a smaller Dynamic Island, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today.
On social media, he said that he is expecting the size of the Dynamic Island to remain "largely unchanged" across the iPhone 17 lineup. His statement is contrary to prior rumors that we've heard about planned changes for the iPhone 17 models.
...
Saturday January 25, 2025 5:07 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's retail stores will be rolling out "merchandise/floor marketing updates" next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman did not explicitly say if the store updates are related to any upcoming product announcements, but he did mention that next week is around the time that Apple rolls out its annual Black Unity watch band for the Apple Watch.
In each of the past four years, ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 2:48 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
It's also time for Apple's first product announcement of the year.
Last year, Apple said it would be launching Powerbeats Pro 2 in 2025, and the wireless earbuds are expected to launch very soon.
Powerbeats Pro 2 images found in iOS 18 code
In his Power On newsletter last weekend, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Powerbeats Pro 2 are "due imminently." In addition to Apple filing the...
IMO unless those large grocery store chains add, apple pay won't be useful enough. To me the benefit should be that you don't have to carry your wallet with you all the time. But today there are only a few places accept (most are still not your daily shops) and you still have to carry your wallet with you all the time.
Hmmmm... I thought the benefit is that it is a safe way to pay versus regular credit/debit cards. (one-time tokens, retailers don't get your credit card number and other personal information, etc)
I never thought Apple Pay was designed so that you could leave your entire wallet at home.
You still need to carry your driver's licence, insurance cards, etc.
I wonder what the possibility of small local banks adding Applepay is. I would love to use Applepay with my debit card, but my bank and all 5 of its location probably wont be offering it anytime soon.
IMO unless those large grocery store chains add, apple pay won't be useful enough. To me the benefit should be that you don't have to carry your wallet with you all the time. But today there are only a few places accept (most are still not your daily shops) and you still have to carry your wallet with you all the time.
Here's the setup process so far for the Regions Check Card.
1. Enter the card into Passbook. No problem. 2. Passbook says that you have to call an 800 number to verify the card with Regions. 3. The 800 number doesn't have an option to verify for Apple Pay 4. Call 1-800-Regions. No relevant option and can't get to a real person 5. Call local branch. They have no idea what Apple Pay is and give you a different 800 number 6. Currently on hold while the first representative transfers me to a different representative. 7. Waiting...
It would be nice if Bank's like Regions let ALL of their representatives know what Apple Pay is and how it works before they make the announcement to the public.
Update: The first representative came back after 10 minutes and said there is an extended hold time for the second representative.
Status: Card not verified after 25 minutes of attempting.
The use of extreme examples to prove a point is called reductio ad absurdum. It's a logical fallacy.
Anyway, none of the actual points I've raised are being addressed, so perhaps it's best to just call it quits.
As I've said before, insert the word of your choice, its all fine by me.
As far as your points being addressed...As far as everything I've seen with consumers, banks and credit card companies alike, have had nothing but intense interest in Apple Pay. All three of my banks have already advertised Apple Pay, even at the very early stages.
While you bring up small banks and financial institutions might not be onboard with it. I've heard nothing about this and would be interested in it myself if it has any legitimacy. But other then mentioning Apple PR, I'm not sure how you came up with that conclusion like that other then the smaller banks not adopting it yet.
Where's the Visa/Mastercard "coming soon" list? I'm dying to find out if some of Regions competitors are on the list, because if not, I may be switching banks
Here's Visa's (http://usa.visa.com/clients-partners/technology-and-innovation/apple-pay/financial-institutions/index.jsp). Click on the drop down box and select "Coming Soon". There's several hundreds of banks listed.
I can't find the MasterCard one at the moment... but there is a list similar to the Visa list.
Following a second round of banks adding support for the Apple Pay mobile payments service last week, Regions Bank today began allowing its cards to be added to the service. The bank has reportedly emailed customers about the new support and MacRumors readers have been successfully adding their cards to Apple Pay.
